TikTok has announced a series of enhancements to its comment sections, aiming to increase user engagement and interaction. The new features include voice comments, comment polls, photo carousel comments, and Live Photo comments. Voice comments allow users to record and post audio messages up to one minute in length, while comment polls enable creators to solicit viewer input on various topics, with up to five voting options and a customizable time frame for results tracking. Photo carousel comments now permit the inclusion of up to nine images in a single comment, and Live Photo comments offer a brief motion preview before displaying the full image.

The introduction of these features reflects TikTok’s strategy to incorporate elements from messaging apps, transforming comment sections into more dynamic spaces for user interaction. TikTok emphasizes that voice comments will be subject to the same Community Guidelines as other content, with enforcement through a combination of human moderators and automated tools, including speech-to-text transcription for policy violation detection. Voice comments will be rolled out globally over the next month to users aged 18 and older, while photo carousel comments will follow a similar rollout schedule. Live Photo comments, however, are already available to all users worldwide.

This is a summary. Read the original at techcrunch.com.